One-man band

Is life/work balance, a myth? When you are pulled away from the middle of a manuscript by life having more important priorities for you, how do you mark the place where you are in your head and how do you find your way back into it quickly? A second question do you work on more than one project at a time? And is that confusing?

by Dietrich

There are times I need to adjust my routine to accommodate real life, and sometimes I get pulled away when I’m right in the thick of it, and that’s just the way it goes — working the ‘imaginary stuff’ around the ‘life stuff.’

I usually write without distraction, and when I do have to stop for a while, I can get right back into it without much trouble. I’ve even sat in an airport waiting-area when an idea for a story popped into my head, and it wanted to be worked on right then, so I got out my pad and started writing. By the time my flight was called, I had a number of pages written. Okay, it needed a lot of editing afterwards, but still …

As I’m writing this, there’s a conversation going on in the next room, and while I can hear it on the surface — and once or twice, I’ve even thrown my two-cents into the discussion — I can stay focused on the writing. I admit this isn’t an ideal way to go about it, but when I’m really into it, I can keep going (again, there’s always editing later). Plus, there’s a door I can close and a volume knob on Spotify. 

I’m a habitual early-riser, so it’s easy to kick off the day by getting into whatever story I was working on the day before, picking up where I left off. That’s when the house is quietest, long before the ‘life stuff’ kicks into gear, and by the time the rest of the world is up, I’m already well engaged.

Have I worked on more than one story at a time? This question calls up an image of a one-man band: a drum on the back, a banjo on the front, a harmonica in the mouth, cymbals on the knees, that kind of thing. 

I did write two novels more or less at once a few years ago, and it worked out okay. The books, Triggerfish and House of Blazes are standalones, and when I finished a draft of Blazes, I let it sit and started on Triggerfish, going back to the first with fresh eyes, then switching again through to completion. I only did it the one time, and I can see that it could become confusing depending on the stories, but it worked back then. And while I might consider doing it again, the key thing is always the quality of the writing, not the quantity of pages.